11
THE WATER IN THE OLD POT HAD BEGUN TO BOIL, convection bubbles bursting on the surface of the liquid. He reached for the handle to move the pot off the flame, but a brightness flared inside him and flooded his mind. He was familiar with the brightness; it was nothing new. He had first seen it in his sleep when he was little. At that time it caused nothing more than slightly painful contractions along his spine. During the previous spring the brightness became impossible to ignore, but he had gradually grown used to it. After the initial blast it usually faded to a glow behind his thoughts, but now, in the solitude of the cabin with nothing to distract him, the brightness overtook him. He was distantly aware that his legs buckled beneath him and that he banged against the stove, faintly hoping that he wouldn’t knock the boiling water over and glad he had placed it on a ring in the back. Then the light outshone everything else. Inside it, he was what he had been before he was born and what he would become when his body was forgotten.
The multi-colored rug was accordioned beneath his hips and against the canister beneath the stove. He blinked and reached for the knobs above him, thinking he could at least turn the flame off, but fell into the light again like a drowning person sliding back into water.
The second time the world came into view he fumbled hard against the front of the stove and almost managed to reach the knob. If he had been home his two cats would have found him and curled up against him, unaware of his struggle. Instead, he heard a tapping on the glass above him and wondered if it had started to rain.
A face, round and pale like the moon, was staring in through the pane in the door. He was half beneath it, half up against the stove, and too close to be fully seen from the outside. The water on the stove hissed and spat tiny needles, which occasionally landed on his skin. The neighbor knocked on the window again.
“Are you all right?” the face asked, breath misting the old glass, voice muted by the barrier. Was that Mark? “If you move a little, I can open the door and come inside!”
“I’m fine, thank you!” he shouted and wriggled closer to the door. “Don’t worry!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course.”
At university he had an acquaintance, a pre-med student, who used to tell a story of how she saved one of her neighboring students when he suffered a seizure while frying ground beef to mix with pasta.
“I heard an odd shout and then there was a bang against the wall,” the pre-med student would say. “I recognized the yell as that of an epileptic fit, dropped everything I had, and ran into my neighbor’s room. He was indeed having a seizure, didn’t even know he had epilepsy. I saved him,” she said, again and again. Every time the pre-med told the story he made a mental note to stay silent if he ever had a fit.
“Eloise and I bought some rice that was on sale in the store,” Mark said. “We bought a bag for you too, if you want it. Have to take advantage of a sale, especially since the prices have jumped again. I’ll just put the bag here.” There was a thud on the deck and something fell against the door.
“Thank you so much!” he said, guilt blossoming up inside him for keeping Mark out while the neighbor was only being friendly. “How much was it?”
“Oh, please don’t worry about it,” Mark said. “It was on sale.”
“No, no,” he said. “Please let me pay for it.”
“It’s nothing, we’re neighbors, after all,” Mark said. “Consider it a house-warming gift.”
“Thank you!” he shouted. “That’s too kind of you. Would you like to come in for some tea?” He wasn’t certain if he would be able to make any tea, but felt he had to offer.
“Thanks, I’m fine,” Mark said. “I have to hurry, Eloise and the children are waiting for me in the car. Take care now!”
He managed to roll over, the bunched-up rug following his movements. Now he faced the ceiling, with the front of the stove rearing over him like a gawking passerby. From there he reached up, curled his fingers around the knob and got just enough leverage to twist it around to zero. The hiss from the nearly invisible blue flame that billowed around the ring in the back and the spattering from the pot faded. He leaned into the rug, its folds smelling of dust and mold. Then the white light caught up with him and he made certain not to make any strange or loud sounds.
12
IN HIS DREAMS IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT, BUT STILL not dark, with a golden shine behind the round mountains in the distance. The night was soft and mild, and soon sparrows would wake and sing. On the ground, crocus flowers shone violet, petals beady with dew, cupping their orange stamen. There was a breath of wind, like the touch from a hand, then the warmth of the pre-dawn landscape enveloped him again.
The crocus pickers whispered to one another as they worked, smiling, laughing quietly. Their diaphanous robes fluttered in the air, indigo and purple hemmed with gold. They deposited their harvest on a carpet of woven silk in the middle of the field, for quick fingers to peel the thin petals and gain the stamens that shivered inside.
At the edges of the meadow the crocus pickers’ children were tended to by siblings or elderly relatives. As he watched, the children grew old enough to participate in the work and joined their families on the flower field. A little while longer and those children had conceived children of their own, who also accompanied their parents to the meadow, and with time replaced them. In the stream that flowed past the meadow, the water gilt with predawn light, a heron lifted, spreading rings upon the surface.
He woke, thinking about Eloise and Mark and their reasons for initiating the project.
In the morning the head of the space organization’s program for manned exploration was interviewed on TV about the astronaut selection process. He watched it on the laptop using his phone as modem. Even here the network was fast enough to stream broadcast and video.
“But is it right to spend all this money, technology, and brain power on sending people into space instead of feeding the billions who are starving, or giving the displaced new livelihoods and housing?” the TV host, a woman in her mid-fifties with brown hair cut in a thick bob, an ivory-colored silk blouse, and a large enamel necklace of daisies, asked.
He scoffed, doubting that the TV host had experienced much hunger or displacement herself.
The head of the space organization, a slim, middle-aged, salt-and-pepper-haired man in a dark suit, leaned close to the host, and winked. “Well, you know, we’re a lot cheaper to run than the defense program.”
The TV host smiled.
“We must of course reduce the hunger and poverty in the world, and help all those who have lost their homes in recent disasters, but the technology and discoveries from space find multiple uses in industry and innovation world-wide. The missions we have planned will benefit all people on Earth,” the head of the space organization concluded, and looked like he meant it.